Panel Report, IPA Congress Boston 2015: Insight and Change: Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives

When the room filled to capacity, and the first ten minutes were spent rearranging the seating, it was clear that this panel was of great interest to analysts. In this panel, David Bell (psychoanalyst) and Adam Leite (psychoanalytic philosopher at Indiana University, Bloomington) presented papers, and Jonathan Lear (psychoanalyst and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago) served as Discussant. As Bell explained, the panel originated when Adam Leite was in London, furthering his interest in psychoanalysis and philosophy. He and Bell engaged in a “prolonged and very fruitful conversation,” in which each of them pushed the other to clarify their understanding of the nature of therapeutic change. They were both acutely aware of the seduction of what Bell called “cognitivism,” where insight is a static rather than dynamic event, involving the accumulation of facts rather than increasing self-understanding. Bell cited Freud's 1937 paper ‘Constructions in analysis’, where he famously states, “We claim no authority … we require no direct agreement from the patient, nor do we argue with him … In short, we conduct ourselves on the model of a familiar figure in one of Nestroy's farces … the manservant who has a single answer on his lips to every question or objection: ‘It will become clear in the course of future developments’”. Bell explained that the point where Freud gave up the seduction theory and turned his attention to “whatever came up” was the birthplace of psychoanalysis. He posed the central question of the panel: what is “real insight” and how do we distinguish it from “pseudo insight” (here drawing on the work of Bion and Joseph)?

In the first of two clinical vignettes, Bell described a man in analysis who sought to av